Pokey LaFarge - Middle of Everywhere - BTRC ROTM

• B.T.R.C. May Motown Record of the Month 2026 
• Release Date: 8/16/2011

Pokey LaFarge’s Middle of Everywhere (2011) is a wonderfully old-fashioned-sounding record that feels less like a modern Americana album than a lost jukebox from the 1920s–40s that somehow got dropped into the 21st century.

It was recorded with the South City Three and released July 19, 2011. The album contains 13 original songs, but LaFarge deliberately writes and performs them as if they belong to an earlier generation.

Middle of Everywhere as sunny, dusty, swinging, handmade and deeply American. It's nostalgic without being mournful. LaFarge clearly loves the music of the past, but he isn't treating it like something sacred behind glass—he plays with it, writes new songs inside its language, and gives it a modern vitality.

If you like The Band, old Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, Robert Johnson, Western swing, jug bands, early jazz, or the Carolina Chocolate Drops, there's a good chance this record will click with you.

And if I had to reduce the whole album to one image: a riverboat rolling down the Mississippi at sunset, with a little jazz club, a country dance, and a blues bar somehow all happening on the same deck.

Tracks:

1 So Long Honeybee, Goodbye
2 Ain't the Same
3 Head to Toe
4 Sunny Side of the Street
5 Shenandoah River
6 Mississippi Girl
7 Feels So Good
8 River Rock Bottom
9 Weedwacker Rag
10 Drinkin' Whisky Tonight
11 Good Country Blues
12 Coffee Pot Blues
13 Keep Your Hands Off My Gal